Upgrading Cloudant Plan from 'Lite'

[Stephen]

Hi all,

I have been successfully sharing a TF database with colleagues using the cloudant service, both prior & under IBM. I have now hit the 1Gb storage limit in the free ‘lite’ plan, so syncing has been suspended.

I have attempted to upgrade to the next tier (pay as you go). It has not been straight forward – they’ve got my credit card details, that bit was easy! but Im at a loss what to do next… I think I have to move, or recreate the database somewhere else to carry on?? I really have no knowledge or experience of any of this & the IBM site talks like you’re plugging in half of Tesco’s (think Wal-Mart!) to their services! It’s just too complex & bewildering for me and my little shared asset register! lol

Does anybody have any experience, or advice they can offer in simple steps to get me through the cryptic maze of IBM pages to get my document syncing again…?

Thanks in advance, Stephen.

P.s. I have raised a ticket through the cloudant/Bluemix??! dashboard, but if it’s anything like the support phone call I had earlier today – I’m not holding my breath…

[Brendan]

Hi Stephen,

Unfortunately I haven’t used their paid version before, so I’m not sure what the steps are to upgrade. However, maybe there’s a better solution rather than sticking with IBM? You could setup an Apache CouchDB instance on one of your computers and let people connect to that. Or you can actually install Apache CouchDB on Amazon Web Services or there are other services that can provide that ability such as 1and1.com

Alternatively, if you’re syncing multiple database documents, you could possibly get around the 1 GB limit by creating a new account if you have a separate email address you can use and then sync to that. I have two separate lite plan accounts myself that I can sync to independently. That way you can get 2 GB of storage. Just not all in the same database document.

[Stephen]

Hi Brendan, thanks for the prompt reply as always.
To be honest, I just don’t have the time right now to faff about trying to work around the limitation. (Although I see the merit in your suggestions and that’s something to bear in mind for the future). Right now the upgrade cost is something I can pass on and I just wanted to hit an ‘OK Upgrade Me!’ Button, but so far it’s just not been that simple.

Hopefully another forum member has some experience and can provide some advice.

Regards, Stephen.

[Brendan]

From Tap Forms perspective it should be no different which plan you have on the IBM Cloudant service. You still connect with the same username and password. So it’s up to IBM to figure out how to charge you I guess. I don’t have any part in that. I just wrote Tap Forms to connect to their service. Mostly because it was the only one who offered a turnkey sync service that worked with the CouchbaseLite database engine I use.

[Stephen]

Sure, I understand.
Just to be clear, I don’t have any issues with TF integration of Cloudant, indeed I don’t have any issues with the hosted service. Everything works just fine – yes, larger attachment size limit would be nice… ;)
I’m just lost in this upgrade process lol
There is lots of jargon and acronyms that I do not understand…
I called the support line, spoke to a nice chap for over 20 minutes. Still not upgraded, couldn’t even establish what sort of account I had (that is probably my fault as I’m so confused, I simply don’t know!). At one point he thought I’d either written Tap Forms, or had commissioned a bespoke application…

Anyways, I’ll keep trying & will report back when it’s finally figured out…

Regards, Stephen.

[Brendan]

Ya, I’m pretty small potatoes as far as IBM is concerned so they’d know nothing about Tap Forms.

I’d love to hear how it goes once you figure it out. Hopefully IBM can help you get it upgraded.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Stephen]

An update…

I believe I have successfully updated to the standard plan. (At least the pop-up upgrade nags have stopped & at least one synchronisation has taken place). It was a nightmare.

Support was friendly, but slow and not very informative – ‘…try following the instructions at this link…’ not very helpful…

A lot of my confusion has come though the various changes IBM have made in the last year or so to the underlying services. Cloudant/IBM/Cloud Foundry/IBM Resource Groups etc… In essence, I had to click a few buttons to transfer my ‘instance’ to a ‘resource group’ which is a nearly instant, seamless transition, before then being able to select that new copy (if it’s right to say that?) and changing its plan level to standard. At some point you have to add card details, but somehow I managed to add those at an earlier attempt, so wasn’t asked for that today.

All in all, for the novice user such as myself with no idea of the terminology used & a nervous disposition when it comes to loosing my data, the whole thing has been very stressful. It’s done now, but I post my findings here to assist anybody else making the jump from lite to standard in the future.

Regards, Stephen.

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